Running and Running
by aquafizzy10
Summary: Things weren't supposed to turn out this way.


Things weren't supposed to turn out this way.

They were supposed to be strong, powerful, and famous. They were supposed to have a large coven that was like a family and rule the world forever. They were supposed to be feared and admired and respected, all other forms of life knowing their place as they knelt at their feet.

They were supposed to be happy.

But instead of the life they expected to have, they were ripped from their home and watched as their family burned. They screamed, thrashed, and howled as they heard the cries of agony from the others, but were held with their arms cracked behind their backs by newborns much stronger than they. Their eyes were murky red, reflecting the flames that grew hundreds in the air in front of them. They were salvaged, shown mercy by the very same man who had murdered their coven. Despite the rumors and theories, their coven was much more than just the rulers before the Volturi. They were friends.

They didn't know each other, back then. The coven was so large, and they all sat so still for so long. None spoke, none fed, but they all protected each other as kin. They were the Romanians, the most proud and superior of all vampire covens ever to exist. Back then they only knew each other as the man who sat across the room, as Vladimir, or as Stefan. Not as the only one who will ever know the world as they did, as they would think thousands of years later.

When the cries stopped and the fires died down, the coven leader tutted at them. His hair was a deep black, like the deepest crevice in the deepest of the oceans, his eyes carrying a deep hatred that he didn't even bother to hide. Aro was his name, he had told them, and it would best suit them if they remembered it.

When they were released from the tight grip of the well-trained newborns, they looked into each other's wild eyes. They were allowed to run, allowed to escape with their lives at the cost of being called cowards. They saw in the eyes of the other that, for the moment, it was worth it. They gripped hands tightly, running and running and running until they reached waters they had never seen before.

"I am Vladimir," the blonde one had said, washing his dirty clothes in the freshwater of a pond not far from the sea, not looking into the other's eye as his voice had cracked and his hands had tightened, tearing a hole through his white shirt easily.

"I am Stefan," the brunette had replied, his tone smoother than the other's, his anguish not quite matching his counterpart's.

Vladimir continued to stare into the rushing water, his eyes staring at nothing in particular. "You lost your mate," Stefan had assumed, shrugging off his coat to give to his only remaining coven mate. They had lost everyone, and he was fortunate enough not to have had a mate himself.

"She was not my mate."

"She would have been."

"Maybe."

That was the last they ever spoke of her.

They never parted, never left each other's sides when times of chaos came. Wars raged, civilizations formed and fell, countries were created… none of it was important. They never expanded their coven of two, never made more to ease their loneliness. None would understand as they did, none would hate the Volturi as they did.

They only had each other, no one else mattered in the world. Younlings who had never heard of them before had assumed they were mates, and they never told them otherwise. Their little, modern brains could not comprehend their level of need for each other. They were more than codependent, they were the same person. Perhaps they _were_ mates, they did as mates did, loved each other as mates did, but even couples that they came across in their travels did not understand their dependency and understanding for the other.

The Volturi may have taken everything from them, and they may hate the Volturi more than anything in the world, but if one perished, the other would go to Volterra and go out with a bang. They understood, and though it was never said, never official, and never corrected, if someone wanted one Romanian, they would always get the other.

Perhaps some did understand what they were to each other, understood the basics of what they were, but even then, there was only so much others from the world outside of each other could assume. They didn't care if anyone got it wrong, didn't care if anyone assumed differently. The only person important in their lives was the other.


End file.
